Gotta agree with Macona on this one.

A few years ago I would have said the same but what brought it home to me was that just up the road from me is an Aerospace company full of all singing, all dancing very, very expensive CNC machines. We play well together, their customers are not mine and we have no need to poach and so we can borrow off each other.

Couple of years ago their lathe guy, one guy runs 3 lathes including programming on his own, came down to borrow a cut knurling tool.
At the time i was screwcutting and he stood at the end of the machine watching until I'd finished.

He said, "I'd love to screwcut" a bit amazed I asked him why he couldn't, his reply was he'd never run a manual lathe in his life, in fact out of the 10 operators they had only one guy had rum a manual milling machine.

So I asked him how they went on and he said when they get a new machine 2 or 3 guys usually have 1 - 3 days hands on training on the machine and that's it, they learn on the job.

Just as we mere manual guys had to, they also have to learn but it's a different learning curve.

For a start they have access to tooling we can only drool over unless we are mega rich.

Classic example, we choose speeds to suit material, and available tooling.
Because they have access to this exotic tooling their only variable is feed.

I watched a big 2 metre long travel bed mill doing wing spar brackets, as the code was ripping thru all the moves were G00, no G01 feed moves in sight. Revs were pegged on max at 15,000 and the only variable was depth of cut, bigger tools, deeper cut.

I asked Alan what he runs his lathes at and again the answer was flat out, he screwcuts everything at 3,000 revs, depending on material determines the depth per pass.

So when he said I've love to be able to screwcut, I replied I'd love to screwcut at 3,000 revs.